Random #312 – 50 Wonderful Random Facts

In 2018, an electrical engineer on board the Bellingshausen Research station in Antarctica stabbed a fellow coworker in the chest multiple times because the colleague had been giving away the endings of books available in the research station’s library.

27. Psychogenic death or psychosomatic death is the phenomenon of sudden death that is brought on within days after a person mentally gives up on life. It occurs when someone experiences a trauma they feel they cannot escape, and the person views death as their only option.

28. When United Nation’s Nordic Battalion was sent to Bosnia in 1993 it disobeyed orders, broke rules of engagement, faked loss of communication to HQ, and became known as one the most trigger-happy peacekeeper units. This enabled them to achieve their mission objective: to protect civilians at all costs.

29. In 2010, a woman was evicted from her £3,000,000 castle in Scotland after she refused to pay a £230 bill for a bridal-wear rental.

30. While Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, the White House served notoriously terrible meals. First Lady Eleanor wanted to set an example for the country during the Depression by serving economical meals made from scraps.

Some hunter-gatherer tribes follow the practice of “Insulting the Meat.” To keep the best hunters from thinking themselves above the rest of the tribe, Ju/’hoan people insult the quality of the meat and lightheartedly mock the hunter who brought the animal down. The bigger the kill, the greater the insults are.

32. The band ‘The Vapors’ were so sure their song “Turning Japanese” would be a huge hit that they intentionally released a different single ahead of it so that they wouldn’t be thought of as a one-hit-wonder.

33. Ben and Jerry’s once sued a company that was naming its porn after their ice cream flavors. There were multiple movies in the “Ben and Cherry’s” series, and the titles included “Boston Cream Thighs,” “Chocolate Fudge Babes,” and “Peanut Butter D-cups.”

34. Forest fires in Germany can detonate leftover unexploded bombs from World War 2, putting firefighters at risk.

35. The animatronic gopher in the 1980 film Caddyshack cost around $500,000 and was built and filmed after the movie had been completed. The first cut was a cocaine-fueled mess and it was suggested in post-production that the gopher should be part of an expanded storyline to tie everything together.

Before elevators, the 2nd floor of buildings were the most sought after because you didn’t have to walk up a lot of stairs and you were above the street level, avoiding all the noises and smells. It’s why a lot of older buildings have larger/nicer rooms on the second floor.

37. Hitler was frustrated that Himmler was performing archeological studies in Germany, as he was worried that they would show the world that “Aryans” lived in mud huts while other civilizations were more technologically advanced.

38. Claiming his first belt at 20 years, four months, and 22 days old, Mike Tyson holds the record as the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title.

39. Carbon dating data for human bones can be thrown off by hundreds of years if the deceased ate a lot of seafood, because the carbon in fish could have been generated hundreds of years ago and then recycled among the fish and plants (and other food) before being caught and eaten by a human.

40. Many whiskeys in the saloons of the Old West contained added Strychnine, a lethal poison. Diluted Strychnine was thought to have curative effects, a belief reinforced by the fact that in many towns the poisoned whiskey was still safer to drink than the locally available water.

Under ‘General Order 11,’ general Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jewish people from 3 states under his control out of a belief that they were responsible for corruption and smuggling in the region. Shortly after this order was issued, it was countermanded by Abraham Lincoln.

42. Kurt Cobain's guttural and slurred voice contributed to the early resistance from radio stations towards adding Nirvana’s most famous song: “Smells like teen spirit” to their playlists as it was hard to understand what Cobain was singing.

43. Mathematician John Edmund Kerrich passed his time in Nazi captivity by flipping a coin 10,000 times. The total percentage of heads and tails flips varied wildly at first but gradually converged around 50/50, providing a demonstration of the Law of Large Numbers.

44. The push bar on commercial doors is called a “crash bar” and was invented to prevent crowd crushes after 183 children died in a theater stampede due to a locked door.

45. Outside the ring, Muhammad Ali attained success as a spoken word artist, where he received two Grammy nominations. He also featured as an actor and writer, releasing two autobiographies. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and focused on religion, philanthropy, and activism.

The Blair Mountain Revolt was the largest armed uprising in the US post-Civil War. Thousands of workers upset at company town policies and poor conditions in the mines, staged a mass strike in West Virginia, leading to the President ordering the army and air force in. The ensuing bloody conflict between the civilians and the military ended with 133 people dead and over 900 jailed.

47. Blenda is a heroine of Swedish legend, who led village women in an attack against Danish men. The women invited the men to a banquet and after the men fell asleep, they killed each and every one of them. King Alle then granted Swedish women new rights including equal inheritance.

48. Australian “Firehawks” intentionally spread wildfires by dropping flaming sticks in unburned areas in order to flush out their prey.

49. A defibrillator doesn't restart a stopped heart. In fact, quite the opposite, it actually stops a heart in the middle of a cardiac event, allowing the heart’s natural backup system to take over and return it to normal sinus rhythm.

50. The Greeks viewed trousers as ridiculous and mocked Persian trousers by calling them ‘sacks.’ The Romans viewed trousers as barbarian clothing but had to adopt them from the Celts as their empire expanded. Romans further adopted trousers through contact with the Near East and Teutons.